He
was at work with some of his field hands in a clearing. One man was on
guard and became alarmed at some sound; Robertson snatched up his gun,
and, while he was peering into the woods, the Indians fired on him. He
ran toward the station and escaped, but only at the cost of a bullet
through the foot. Immediately sixty mounted riflemen gathered at
Robertson's station, and set out after the fleeing Indians; but finding
that in the thick wood they did not gain on their foes, and were
hampered by their horses, twenty picked men were sent ahead. Among these
twenty men was fierce, moody young Andrew Jackson. They found the
Indians in camp, at daybreak, but fired from too great a distance; they
killed one, wounded others, and scattered the rest, who left sixteen
guns behind them in their flight. [Footnote: Haywood, 244.]
Wrongs Committed by Both Sides.
During these two years many people were killed, both in the settlements,
on the trail through the woods, and on the Tennessee River, as they
drifted down-stream in their boats. As always in these contests the
innocent suffered with the guilty. The hideous border ruffians, the
brutal men who murdered peaceful Indians in times of truce and butchered
squaws and children in time of war, fared no worse than unoffending
settlers or men of mark who had been staunch friends of the Indian
peoples.
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